Part of AAPG’s GeoAnalytics Credentialing Program, this two-day online AAPG Short Course, Excel-Based Random Forest Machine Learning Algorithms: Programming and Application 2.0, is set to take place 28–29 April 2020 for web-based participation only.

It has been said that wise people surround themselves with the smartest people they can find and then listen to them. I am always looking for opportunities to learn something about the future of oil and gas from people in other disciplines. In late February, with that thought in mind, I attended a luncheon hosted by the Unites States Association for Energy Economics at the Federal Reserve building in Houston.

What a difference a month makes. I discussed black swan events in last month’s President’s Column. Let me tell you, the AAPG and the oil industry just got hit with three black swan events all at once: the coronavirus, the stock market’s major drop and the oil price plunge. While the drop in the stock market and the drop in demand for oil have a direct tie to the coronavirus, the unwinding of OPEC+ has added to the oil price drop. Understandably, the events of this past month have caused an increased amount of anxiety for many people.

The Rocky Mountain Section of AAPG is pleased to announce the winners of its Presentation Awards for the section’s 2019 Annual Conference which was held in Cheyenne, Wyo. The Presentation Awards are given to those who present the best technical papers at the annual meeting. Authors gave more than 125 oral and poster presentations on the geology of the Rocky Mountain region at the Cheyenne meeting. Judging on technical merit and presentation determined the winners.

It all started in 2002, when Unocal revealed that its Trident-1 well had found 400 meters of 70-percent net Lower Wilcox Formation sand in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico, about 400 kilometers beyond the contemporaneous shelf break offshore south Texas. Art Berman and I gazed at a GOM activity map and pondered how that amount of sand could have been deposited so far out into the basin. Our working hypothesis was that this sand deposit was due to a drop in base level, but we also knew that the worldwide sea level was not in decline at that time. A log of the nearby Shell Great White well shows that this sand deposition began suddenly and ended suddenly. This was also puzzling, since we were trained to expect gradational coarsening-upward bedding during regression and fining-upward during transgression, rather than the sharp contacts we were seeing. Sudden avulsion of a major river in a deltaic environment could produce something like this, but how could it happen far beyond the shelf edge?

The history of the Permian Basin reads like a detective novel in reverse. Geoscientists know how the story turns out. They’re trying to determine exactly how it started. Robert Stern, a professor of geosciences at the University of Texas at Dallas, thinks he and a group of fellow scientists have solved one important part of the mystery. Stern. “We know oil is limited by the nutrients. Oil just doesn’t suddenly appear,” he said. That raises the question, “How did all those nutrients get there?”

The worldwide spread of the coronavirus demonstrates how disruptive a medical pandemic can be for the upstream sector of the oil and gas industry. In addition to presenting a huge health challenge, the crisis also means a substantial decline in world oil demand. The expectation of reduced consumption has already resulted in a sharp drop in crude prices. But for the U.S. exploration and production sector, the effects of the coronavirus pandemic might not be completely negative, according to at least one analyst.

Join the U-Pitch Technology Showcase at the AAPG Annual Convention and Exhibition (ACE), where you can pitch to prospective customers, commercialization partners, and even potential sources of capital. You’ll have a 15-minute block for your brief presentation and questions and answers. Your presentation will also be available on our website, and we’ll continue to introduce you to possible partners and customers.

Whole core from both the Delaware and Midland Basins will be examined to understand the changes in slope deposits from both confined and unconfined settings. The goal of this course will be to understand how these deposits impact reservoir quality in the basins.

This virtual short course focuses on methods and workflows for identifying, characterizing, and developing tight-shale reservoirs. Participants will learn how to apply mudrock depositional, sedimentological, sequence stratigraphic, and geochemical principles to exploration areas and production assets in shale basins.

This online short course is designed to provide a geologic perspective of the climate debate to both geoscientists and non-geoscientists. By completing the course participants will have a better understanding of how the earth’s climate/sea levels/plates have changed/moved over geologic time, the earth’s evolving climate/plate positions/sea-level variations affected life on earth, and the environment has impacted man & man has impacted the earth’s environment.

Any complete core analysis program should include companion thin sections for all core plugs on which measurements have been made. This course will describe the use of multimodal thin section imaging and image analysis to make quantitative estimates of rock properties that are important in hydrocarbon exploration and production.

This course will allow beginner or intermediate professionals to provide with daily geochemical solutions to executional E&P projects from exploration to WIM/production and environmental footprints issues.

During this course, participants will gain the foundations for understanding and predicting the geometry, connectivity, and permeability trends of fluvial reservoir systems at the scale of boreholes, fields, and basins. A full range of topics needed to identify, correlate, and interpret fluvial reservoirs and encasing non-reservoir units will be covered.

This course will discuss the Huff-n-Puff gas EOR process specifically, but will also address relevant fundamentals of displacement-based gas EOR methods (miscibility, vaporization, and displacement) in tight unconventionals.

Data driven modeling is becoming a key differentiation to unlock higher recoveries from existing fields as well as identify new opportunities. In this course, we will be introducing advanced analytical tools and techniques - machine learning and data mining algorithms used to identify of trends and patterns in any given dataset and predict future trends.

This course provides a comprehensive methodology for the diagnosis, analysis, and forecasting of well production data in unconventional resources. An extensive evaluation of the diagnostic tools for assessing data viability, checking data correlation along with flow regime identification is presented.

The course is designed for both graduate students majoring in applied geophysics and more experienced geophysicists working in research, technical service, or exploration. Attendees are expected to be familiar with the basics of seismic wave propagation and data processing.

Geomechanics – in both completions and drilling operations – has become a critical technology in the development of Unconventional Plays. This course presents the basics of oil field geomechanics and its application to unconventional developments, specifically, the role of stress, pore pressure, mechanical properties, and natural fractures on hydraulic fracturing operations.

This one-day session will include a view of best practices for Carbon Management with a focus on fugitive methane reduction. It will include global and local examples of Carbon Regulations, give tools for de-risking regulatory compliances and field-proven methane reduction technology cases.

Deltas are extremely important depositional systems and often source and contain prolific hydrocarbon accumulations. This workshop includes topical lectures, key cores, and a suite of exercises that integrate core, well logs, experimental flume data, and seismic sections to develop identification and subsurface mapping skills of hydrocarbon accumulations within deltaic settings.

This two-day workshop provides a review of the application of carbonate facies, diagenesis, and seismic sequence stratigraphy to exploration and production. The workshop combines seismic, well log and rock data, to develop interpretations that help predict carbonate hydrocarbon systems, and characterize conventional and unconventional carbonate reservoirs and seals.

This course is ideal for individuals involved in Midland Basin exploration and development. Successful development of Wolfcamp shale oil relies on complex inter-relationships (ultimately interdependencies) within and between a wide variety of scientific disciplines, financial entities, and company partnerships.

Recognition and Correlation of the Eagle Ford, Austin Formations in South Texas can be enhanced with High Resolution Biostratigraphy, fossil abundance peaks and Maximum Flooding Surfaces correlated to Upper Cretaceous sequence stratigraphic cycle chart after Gradstein, 2010.

The following short course option was developed for geology and geophysics students that have not had much exposure to how geoscience is applied in industry. It can be tailored for undergraduate juniors and seniors or graduate students. The agenda can be modified to meet specific needs and time constraints. Contact the presenter to discuss options.

In 1991, Gulf Indonesia and its partners discovered South Sumatra Basin’s first major gas field at Dayung in the Corridor PSC. A key feature of this field is that most of the reserves are held within fractured basement rocks of pre-Tertiary age.

This is a less-technical education topic. It can be condensed to an hour or given as 2 two-hour sessions. It stresses selected controversial aspects of fracking that touch some combination of environment and economics and includes a short video of how fracking is done.

The following short course option was developed for geology and geophysics students that have not had much exposure to how geoscience is applied in industry. It can be tailored for undergraduate juniors and seniors or graduate students. The agenda can be modified to meet specific needs and time constraints. Contact the presenter to discuss options.

Hydraulic fracturing has been around for decades. This talk describes some of the first applications of the technology, how it developed over time, and our current understanding of its impacts with some discussion of both water and earthquake hazards.

The following short course option was developed for geology and geophysics students that have not had much exposure to how geoscience is applied in industry. It can be tailored for undergraduate juniors and seniors or graduate students. The agenda can be modified to meet specific needs and time constraints. Contact the presenter to discuss options.

Microseismicity induced by hydraulic fracture stimulation of a horizontal well was mapped with a near-surface buried array. Distinct linear trends of events were not parallel to the direction of fast shear wave polarization measured in the reservoir with a crossed-dipole anisotropy tool. Analysis of core from a nearby well revealed numerous calcite-filled fractures that did not induce shear wave polarization, but did significantly impact the failure behavior of the reservoir rock during the stimulation treatment. Hydraulic fracture simulation with DFN modeling and source mechanism analysis supports the interpretation of reactivated existing fractures rather than the formation of hydraulically-induced tensile fractures.

Analysis of microseismicity induced by hydraulic fracture stimulation in the Marcellus Shale shows changes in stress state for different zones of failure. During the treatment, shear failure occurs on both the J1 and J2 fracture orientations in response to different maximum stress orientations, indicating localized changes in the orientation during the treatment. Reactivation of a fault near the wellbore is associated with failure mechanisms with a higher volumetric component, indicating possible inflation of faults and fractures by the introduction of the slurry. Quantification of the stress conditions that are associated with inflation could potentially be used to optimize the stimulation by identifying which fractures will preferentially take on slurry volume.

The following short course option was developed for geology and geophysics students that have not had much exposure to how geoscience is applied in industry. It can be tailored for undergraduate juniors and seniors or graduate students. The agenda can be modified to meet specific needs and time constraints.

This lecture will discuss the differences between carbonates and siliciclastics from their chemical composition through their distributions in time and space. Building on these fundamental differences, we will explore the challenges carbonates pose to petroleum geologists in terms of seismic interpretation, reservoir quality prediction, field development, etc. Peppered with humorous personal stories, still raging academic debates, and the heartfelt frustrations of real industry professionals, the aim is to inspire students and young professionals to rise to the occasion and embrace the reservoir rocks that petroleum geologists love to hate.